fat talk

There has been a veritable explosion of “anti-fat talk” movements in the body image and eating disorder prevention realms over the past few years. Indeed, campaigns like the Tri-Delta Sorority Fat Talk Free week have become relatively well known. Events like the “Southern Smash,” where participants literally smash scales are other iterations of this social phenomenon encouraging a more positive conversation around bodies.

I am, of course, a fan of the idea that we shouldn’t put our bodies down; I’m a huge proponent of the need to avoid putting our own and others’ bodies down. I think that initiatives like Fat Talk Free week are good practice as they help move conversations in more productive directions and help to redirect our focus from bodies as our only source of value.

One of my concerns about these initiatives is that in signing up to do a Fat Talk Free … Continue reading →

Definitioner

meta-analysis

the use of statistical techniques in a systematic review to integrate the results of included studies; sometimes misused as a synonym for systematic reviews, where the review includes a meta-analysis (2)

body image

one’s sense of the self and one’s body (14)

systematic review

a systematic review attempts to identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a given research question; researchers conducting systematic reviews use explicit methods aimed at minimizing bias, in order to produce more reliable findings that can be used to inform decision making (2)

outcome

in a research study, a component of a participant's clinical and functional status after an intervention has been applied, that is used to assess the effectiveness of an intervention (2)

risk factor

an aspect of a person's condition, lifestyle or environment that affects the probability of occurrence of a disease (e.g., cigarette smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer) (2)

sampling

the process of selecting subjects for research (e.g., random sampling, availability sampling) (8)

SE (standard error)

the standard deviation of the sampling distribution of a statistic; the standard error is a measure of the variation in the sample statistic over all possible samples of the same size; standard error decreases as the sample size increases (2)

genetic predisposition

increased susceptibility to a particular disease due to the presence of one or more gene mutations, and/or a combination of alleles (haplotype), not necessarily abnormal, that is associated with an increased risk for the disease, and/or a family history that indicates an increased risk for the disease (3)

internalization

the process through which children absorb knowledge from the social context (4)

incidence

the number of new cases of a given disease during a given period in a specified population; it also is used for the rate at which new events occur in a defined population; it is differentiated from prevalence, which refers to all cases, new or old, in the population at a given time (3)

generalizable (generalisation)

an inference made from a sample (i.e., results of a study) to a population (8)

random sampling

a procedure in which each member of the population has an equal chance of being included in the sample (8)